property at the expenes of nunanity. This was abusing their power, and commencing a tyranny. If a savage, before ne entered into soci ty, nad been told"Your neighbor, by this means, may become owner of "an hundred deer; but if your brother, or your son, or σε yourself, having no deer of your own, and being nunes gry, should kill one, an infamous death must be the CC consequence:" he would probably have preferred dis liberty, and his common right of killing any deer, to all the advantages of society that might be proposed to

him.

That it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved; ne ver, that I know of, controverted. Even the sangumary author of the Thoughts agrees to it, adding well, "that "the very thought of injured innocence, and much "6 more that of suffering innocence, must awaken all ❝ our tenderest and most compassionate felings, and at the same time raise our highest indignation against <«the instruments of it. But (he adds) there is no dan66 ger of either, from a strict adherence to the laws.". Really!Is it then impossible to make unjust laws? and if the law itself be unjust, may it not be the very instrument" which ought to raise the author's, and tr every body's highest indignation?" I see, in the last newspapers from London, that a woman is capitally convicted at the Old Bailey, for privately stealing out of a shop some gauze, value fourteen shillings and three-pence: Is there any proportion between the injury done by a theft, value fourteen shillings and threepence, and the punishment of a human creature, by death, on a gibbet? Might not that woman, by her Jabour, have made a reparation ordained by God, in paying four-fold? Is not all punishment inflicted beyond the merit of the offence, so much punishment of innocence? In this light, how vast is the annual quantity, of not only injured but suffering innocence, in almost all the civilized states of Europe!

m immediately to be hung up by the legs, and to reive a hundred blows of a cudgel on the soles of his et, that the severe sense of the punishment, and fear incurring it thereafter, might prevent the faults that ould merit it. Our author himself would hardly apove entirely of this Turk's conduct in the government slaves; and yet he appears to recommend something ze it in the government of English subjects, when he plauds the reply of Judge Burnet to the convict horseealer; who being asked what he had to say why judgent of death should not pass against him, and answerg, that it was hard to hang a man for only stealing a rse, was told by the Judge, "Man, thou art not to be nged only for stealing a horse, but that horses may ot be stolen." The man's answer, if candidly examed, will, I imagine, appear reasonable, as being foundI on the eternal principle of justice and equity, that nishments should be proportioned to offences, and e judge's reply brutal and unreasonable, though the riter" wishes all judges to carry it with them whener they go to the circuit, and to bear it in their minds, containing a wise reason for all the penal statutes hich they are called upon to put in execution. It at ce illustrates (says he) the true grounds and reasons all capital punishments whatsoever, namely, that ery man's property, as well as his life, may be held cred and inviolate." Is there then no difference in lue between property and life? If I think it right at the crime of murder should be punished with death, t only as an equal punishment of the crime, but to event other murders, does it follow that I must apove of the same punishment for a little invasion on y property by theft? If I am not so barbarous, so body-minded and revengeful, as to kill a fellow creare for stealing from me fourteen shillings and three

pence, how can I approve of the law that does it? Montesquieu, who was himself a judge, endeavours to impress other maxims. He must have known what humane judges feel on such occasions, and what the effects of those feelings; and, so far from thinking that severe and excessive punishments prevent crimes, he asserts, as quoted by our French writer, that

"L'atrocite des loix en empeche l'execution.

"Lorsque la peine est sans mesure, on est souvent oblige de lui preferer l'impunite,

"La cause des tous les relachements vient de l'impunite "des crimes, et non de la moderation des peines."

It is said by those who know Europe generally, that there are more thefts committed and punished annually in England than in all other nations put together. If this be so, there must be a cause or causes for such depravity in our common people. May not one be the deficiency of justice and morality in our national government, manifested in our oppressive conduct to subjects, and unjust wars on our neighbors? View the long-persisted in, unjust, monopolizing treatment of Ireland, at length acknowledged! View the plundering government exercised by our merchants in the East-Indies; the confiscating war made upon the American colonies; and, to say nothing of those uponFrance and Spain, view the late war upon Holland, which was seen by impartial Europe in no other light: than as a war of rapine and pillage; the hopes of an immense and easy prey being its only apparent, and probably its real motive and encouragement, Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between ́neighbor citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang, as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang. After employing your people in robbing the Dutch, is it strange that, being out of that employ by peace, they still continue robbing, and rob one another? Piraterie, as the French call it, or privateering, is the universal bent of the English nation, at home and abroad, wher

ever settled. No less than seven hundred privateers were, it is said, commissioned in the last war! These were fitted out by merchants, to prey upon other merchants, who had never done them any injury. Is there probably any one of those privateering merchants of London, who were so ready to rob the merchants of Amsterdam. that would not as readily plunder another London merchant of the next street, if he could do it with the same impunity? The avidity, the alieni appetens is the same; it is the fear alone of the gallows that makes the difference. How then can a nation, which, among the honestest of its people, has so many thieves by inclination, and whose government encouraged and commissioned no less than seven hundred gangs of robbers; how can such a nation have the face to condemn the crime in individuals, and to hang up twenty of them in a morning! It naturally puts one in mind of a Newgate anecdote. One of the prisoners complained that in the night somebody had taken his buckles out of his shoes.. What the devil!" says another,. "have we then thieves amongst us? It must not be suffered. Let us search out the rogue, and pump him. to death."

There is, however, one late instance of an English merchant who will not profit by such ill gotten gain.— He was, it seems, part owner of a ship, which the other owners thought fit to employ as a letter of marque, and which took a number of French prizes. The boo ty being shared, he has now an agent here enquiring, by an advertisement in the Gazette, for those who suffered the loss, in order to make them, as far as in him lies, restitution. This conscientious man is a Quaker. The Scoich presbyterians were formerly as tender; for there is still extant an ordinance of the town-council of Edinburgh, made soon after the Reformation, "forbidding the purchase of prize goods, under pain of losing the freedom of the burgh for ever, with other punishment, at the will of the magistrate; the practice of making prizes being contrary to good conscience,

and the rule of treating Christian brethern, as we would wish to be treated; and such goods are not to be sold by any godly men within this burgh." The race of these godly men in Scotland is probably extinct, or their principles abandoned, since, as far as that nation had a hand in promoting the war against the colonies, prizes and confiscations are believed to have been a considerable: motive.

It has been for some time a generally-received opinion, that a military man is not to enquire, whether a war be just or unjust; he is to execute his orders. Alk princes who are disposed to become tyrants, must probably approve of this opinion, and be willing to estab lish it; but is it not a dangerous one? since on that principle, if the tyrant commands his army to attack and destroy, not only an unoffending neighbor nation, but even his own subjects, the army is bound to 'obey. A negro slave, in our colonies, being commanded by his master to rob or murder a neighbor, or do any other immoral act, may refuse; and the magistrate will protect him in his refusal. The slavery then of a soldier is worse than that of a negro ! A conscientious officer, if not restrained by the apprehension of its being imputed to another cause, may indeed resign, rather than be employed in an unjust war, but the private men are slaves for life; and they are perhaps incapable of judg ing for themselves. We can only lament their fate, and still more that of a sailor, who is often dragged by force from his honest occupation, and compelled to im brue his hands in perhaps innocent blood.. But methinks it well behoves merchants (men more enlightened by their education, and perfectly free from any such force or obligation) to consider weli of the justice of a war, before they voluntarily engage a gang of ruffians to attack their fellow-merchants of a neighboring nation, to plunder them of their property, and perhaps ruin them and their families, if they yield it; or to wound, main, and murder them, if they attempt to defend it. Yet these things are done by Christian merchants,,